Civil War Canon

Sites of Confederate Memory in South Carolina

By Thomas J. Brown

376 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 33 halftones, 2 maps, notes, bibl., index

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-4227-7
    Published: February 2018
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-2096-1
    Published: February 2015
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-4666-2
    Published: February 2015

Civil War America

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Awards & distinctions

A Civil War Monitor Honorable Mention Best Book of 2015

In this expansive history of South Carolina’s commemoration of the Civil War era, Thomas J. Brown uses the lens of place to examine the ways that landmarks of Confederate memory have helped white southerners negotiate their shifting political, social, and economic positions. By looking at prominent sites such as Fort Sumter, Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery, and the South Carolina statehouse, Brown reveals a dynamic pattern of contestation and change. He highlights transformations of gender norms and establishes a fresh perspective on race in Civil War remembrance by emphasizing the fluidity of racial identity within the politics of white supremacy.

Despite the conservative ideology that connects these sites, Brown argues that the Confederate canon of memory has adapted to address varied challenges of modernity from the war's end to the present, when enthusiasts turn to fantasy to renew a faded myth while children of the civil rights era look for a usable Confederate past. In surveying a rich, controversial, and sometimes even comical cultural landscape, Brown illuminates the workings of collective memory sustained by engagement with the particularity of place.

About the Author

Thomas J. Brown has taught at the University of South Carolina since 1996.
For more information about Thomas J. Brown, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

“An excellent contribution to the still-fertile field of Civil War memory and offers timely insight into the South Carolina of June 17, 2015.”--Journal of American History

“A well-timed study. . . . Extremely well written and engaging.”--Journal of Southern History

“A fine history of the people and landmarks of South Carolina that stand as edifices to both the Confederate past and what this past meant for communities enduring the throes of modernization.”--Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians

“Demonstrates the profound discontinuities of Confederate memory in South Carolina.”--Journal of American Culture

“An excellent study of South Carolina’s struggle with its Confederate past. From Reconstruction and industrialization to technological change and the growth of the military-industrial complex, Brown works to balance local memory with nationally important movements and economic change. Civil War Canon will be the standard volume on the Palmetto State’s Confederate memory for a generation.”--South Carolina Historical Magazine

"At a time when one could ask, fairly, what is left to say about Civil War memory, Thomas J. Brown offers us a fresh and revealing analysis. Lost Cause scholarship often approaches the subject with an emphasis on a particular context--politics, or gender studies, or economic change. Brown threads these disparate approaches together and moves the study of Confederate memory all the way through the twentieth century, something few historians can claim."--Charles J. Holden, St. Mary's College of Maryland

Multimedia & Links

Read: Brown's guest blog post, "Confederate Retweet," on our Civil War 150 blog.